Hustle and Flow

I watched Hustle & Flow tonight. "Everybody's got a
dream" is the theme, even a small-time pimp with an ugly car and a
shack for a house. I don't know. Does everybody? Sometimes I'm pretty
sure I don't. But, maybe if you're in a place that you have a driving
need to escape from, you do. In that case, though, don't you have a
driving need to escape from the place you're in more than you have
a dream?

It's a good film. There are some problems, though. Even though there
aren't that many characters in the story, the relationships between
them stay mostly unexplained. Why are these girls working for him? How
did this whole thing get started? DJay is a pretty inconsistent
character. How can he seem so sincere and dedicated and caring, but be
a pimp? It's not very believable that he has such a friendly
relationship with his (very small) harem, but has no trouble renting
them out. There's also a somewhat annoying A-Team sequence where a
small recording studio gets built with tools that came from nowhere.
Sometimes it seems like DJay and friends have all the money in the
world, and sometimes it seems like they don't have any at all. Which
is it?

The penultimate scene, when DJay has his moment of truth, is
brilliantly done. I won't give it away, but I get the feeling that the
whole movie grew out of this club sequence.